Thursday, May 14, 2015

The Kingdom of God: Readings for Ascension Day

In the Diocese of
Steubenville, as well as in most of the USA, Ascension Day is observed this
Sunday.I wish the traditional
observance on Thursday of the Sixth Week of Easter was retained, but reality is
what it is.

Therefore, this weekend we
will look at the powerful readings for Ascension Day.

This is an unusual Lord’s
Day, in which the “action” of the Feast Day actually takes place in the First
Reading.We typically think of all the
narratives of Jesus’ life as recorded in the Gospels, overlooking that Acts
records at least two important narratives about the activity of the Resurrected
Lord (Acts 1:1-11; also 9:1-8).

In the first book,
Theophilus,
I dealt with all that Jesus did and taught
until the day he was taken up,
after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit
to the apostles whom he had chosen.
He presented himself alive to them
by many proofs after he had suffered,
appearing to them during forty days
and speaking about the kingdom of God.
While meeting with the them,
he enjoined them not to depart from Jerusalem,
but to wait for “the promise of the Father
about which you have heard me speak;
for John baptized with water,
but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

When they had gathered
together they asked him,
“Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”
He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons
that the Father has established by his own authority.
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,
and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem,
throughout Judea and Samaria,
and to the ends of the earth.”
When he had said this, as they were looking on,
he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going,
suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.
They said, “Men of Galilee,
why are you standing there looking at the sky?
This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven

will return in the same way as you
have seen him going into heaven.”

Like most English
translations, the one used in Mass does not adequately translate the Greek word
sunalizomenos in verse 4.Above it is rendered “while meeting with
them,” but literally it is “while taking salt with them,” which is a Greek
idiom meaning “sharing a meal.”This is
the usual meaning of sunalizomenos;
the only justification I have seen in the lexicons (e.g. BAGD) for rendering it
“spending time with” rather than “eating with” is that “eating with” supposedly
doesn’t make sense in the context of Acts 1:4.On the contrary, I suggest it makes a lot of sense, and is in fact
theologically significant in light of Luke 22:16,18, which seem to suggest that
Jesus will not eat or drink again until the Kingdom comes.The fact that he is eating and drinking with
them here, is an indication of the arrival of the Kingdom (see also Acts
10:41).

The disciples ask, “Will you
at this time restore the Kingdom to Israel?”Jesus’ response is sometimes taken as a rebuff of the apostles, or a
ducking of their question, implying perhaps that what they ask for will only
take place in the eschaton.However, as
Scott Hahn has pointed out, it is possible to take the Lord’s response as answering
not when but how.It is the witness (martyria) of the Apostles from
“Jerusalem, to Judea, to Samaria, to the ends of the earth” (i.e. the
Gentiles)—concentric circles of the ancient Kingdom of David (David’s city,
tribe, nation, and vassals, respectively)—that will bring about the new Israel,
the Kingdom of God, which is manifest visibly in the world as the Church.

In much of American
Christianity, there is the view that we are to expect Jesus to come back and
reign over a Jewish kingdom in Israel in the end times—even perhaps to rebuild
the stone Temple and restore animal sacrifice.For this reason, some American Christians treat the modern State of
Israel as a quasi-sacred entity that deserves our carte blanche political support.

The Catholic tradition has
not and does not endorse this view, and it would seem to represent a retrograde
action in salvation history.Why would
we want to return to a Temple of stone when we have the Temple of Christ’s
body, which has now transformed our bodies into his Temple?Have we not learned the lesson that God does
not dwell in Temples made by human hands?Mutatis mutandis, the same
points would apply to a political kingdom the size of New Jersey in the Near
East.How would that satisfy, now that
the Spirit has been poured into our hearts and reigns in us throughout the
world, now that we who are made meek in the Spirit have inherited the earth?
(Matt 5:5)

Moreover, people fail to
realize that the Church is the manifestation of the Kingdom of God on
earth.It is clear that the Church is
the Kingdom of Christ, since the living Christ is King of the Church, and the
Church is administered by the royal steward, the successor of Peter (cf. Matt
16:18-19, Isaiah 22:22), and the “twelve officers over the kingdom” (cf. 1
Kings 4:7; Matt 10:1,5-6; Matt 19:28), now become more numerous among their
successors.Since Christ is God, his
kingdom is the kingdom of God.Since
Christ is the Son of David, his kingdom is the kingdom of David.What else could it mean that “Lord God will give to him the throne of his father
David,and he will reign over the house
of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there will be no end” (Luke
1:32-33)?How then is Christ to come
again to set up a kingdom from Jerusalem, when he has already established his
kingdom and it is spread over all the earth?

It is often said that Acts is
the story of the Church, which is not wrong.But from beginning (see Acts 1:4!) to the end (see Acts 28:31!) Acts is
about the kingdom, of which the
visible Church is the earthly manifestation.Acts begins with Jesus preaching the kingdom in Israel, and ends with
Paul preaching it in Rome.

The Responsorial Psalm is the
powerful Psalm 47, whose original historical context must have been a dramatic
liturgical procession, perhaps the bringing of the Ark into the sanctuary after
battle, or perhaps even an enthronement festival in which the ascension of the
Son of David to his throne was seen as mystical representation of the
enthronement of YHWH in heaven.(If so,
it would not be the only place in the psalms where the Son of David is
“confused” with God himself—see Psalm 45:6 [Hebrew])

The Church sees this Psalm
fulfilled, of course, in the Ascension of the Christ and his session “at the
right hand of God” (Acts 2:33).

The Second Reading (Eph
1:17-23) continues to focus on the royal authority given to Jesus of Nazareth,
the Son of David and Son of God:

Brothers and sisters:
May the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory,
give you a Spirit of wisdom and revelation
resulting in knowledge of him.
May the eyes of your hearts be enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope that belongs to his call,
what are the riches of glory
in his inheritance among the holy ones,
and what is the surpassing greatness of his power
for us who believe,
in accord with the exercise of his great might,
which he worked in Christ,
raising him from the dead
and seating him at his right hand in the heavens,
far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion,
and every name that is named
not only in this age but also in the one to come.
And he put all things beneath his feet
and gave him as head over all things to the church,
which is his body,
the fullness of the one who fills all things in every way.

The “principalities,
authorities, powers, and dominions” and “names that are named” referred to
above indicate spiritual powers, i.e. angels and demons.Christ has been placed over the entire
spiritual hierarchy.St. Paul says, “he
put everything under his feet,” applying Psalm 8:6 to Jesus and providing one of
the earliest witnesses to the messianic reading of this important Psalm.It is Christ’s session above the spiritual
hierarchy that gives the co-seated Church (Eph 2:6) power over the demonic
realm, exercised quite dramatically in the rite of exorcism (as displayed with
many inaccuracies in the recent movie “The Rite”; better to read this) but no
less powerfully in the Sacraments, especially (in my view) the Sacrament of
Confession, which has great power for spiritual deliverance (discussed
here).Christians are not meant to be
pawns of the devil; the devil cannot “make me do it.”We are to be victorious by wielding the sword
of the Spirit of the Risen One.

The Gospel is the famous
“Great Commission” (Matt 28:16-20), often jokingly referred to as the “Great
Omission”, in reference to our frequent failures as believers in spreading the
Gospel.Actually, although great human
failures have marked the spread of the Church, it still is to be found present
and active on every continent, in every nation.One third of human beings identify as Christians, one sixth as
Catholics.Even from a merely natural
perspective of cultural history, the Church is a remarkable and singular
phenomenon.

The eleven disciples went to Galilee,
to the mountain to which Jesus had ordered them.
When they saw him, they worshiped, but they doubted.
Then Jesus approached and said to them,
“All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Jesus words in the Great
Commission (“All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me ...”)
reflect the theology of Psalm 2, the Royal Coronation Hymn of the Son of David
(“Ask of me and I will make the nations your heritage, the ends of the earth
your possession ...”), which is perhaps the most important psalm to the
theology of the New Testament.

In any case, let us note that
the Commission is not simply to “preach me as Lord and personal Savior,” as
admirable as that may be, but it is “to make disciples”—which is a long-term
process of formation involving self-denial (it took Jesus three years with the
twelve)—and “to baptize,” a reference to the sacramental ministry of the
Church.Finally, the Commission is “to
teach them to observe all that I have
commanded you,” which seems to refer to a considerably large catechetical
undertaking, instructing all the nations in the halakha (interpreted Divine Law) of the Messiah, the Son of
David.In other words, the Great
Commission is not satisfied by knocking on doors and passing out tracts—as good
as those things may be.It is a
description of the entire mission and action of the Church—evangelistic,
sacramental, catechetical.

Let us consider this
catechetical mission a little more closely.The words of the Gospel do not say “teaching them all that I have
commanded you,” but rather “teaching them to
observe all that I have commanded you.”It’s like the difference between a course in hydrodyamics and a course
in swimming.You ought not to learn
simply the theory of the buoyancy of bodies in water, but how to swim!We have sadly
neglected this.With good intentions, we
have taught many people about
Christianity, but not how to live the
Christian life.Something Cardinal
Pell said this week struck me as relevant.He observed that “very few pilgrims to the Vatican seem to have more
than two children.”That’s very
interesting, since the use of natural methods for child spacing usually result
in a family size of around six to ten.So even among Catholics devout enough to want to make a pilgrimage to
the Vatican, it’s uncommon to see a lived witness to the Church’s teaching on
openness to life.And openness to life,
contrary to the way it may seem to many, is not really a side-issue or a
tangential teaching, but at the deepest level it is intimately tied up with our
understanding of divine love, the Trinity, marriage, the family, and reality in
general.So this is one area in which we
are not doing a good job of teaching the disciples of Christ “to observe all that I have commanded
you.”And of course there are many other
examples as well.

It’s not that catechetical
instruction should be stripped of intellectual content, but all of us need to
be aware that, just as Christ became incarnate, so also we must incarnate the
teaching of Christ—act on it, live it out.And until we teach others not simply to know it but to live it, we haven’t succeeded in
manifesting the Kingdom of Christ on earth.